Ivanka Trump to Head Review of U.S. Role in Paris Climate Change Agreement

Ivanka Trump has been tapped by her father, President Donald Trump, to review the United States’ commitment to the Paris Climate Change agreement, signed by former President Barack Obama as an executive agreement in 2015 without congressional approval, the Associated Press is reporting.

The agreement requires countries to cut greenhouse emissions on a country-by-country basis, with Obama committing the U.S. to reduce carbon emissions by at least 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.

The U.S. is expected to have a representative at the United Nations’ climate change meeting in Bonn, Germany, next week but Trump’s advisers — including daughter Ivanka and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt — are meeting on Tuesday in Washington to decide whether to stick with or withdraw from the deal.

Last month, in an interview with FOX and Friends, Pruitt said that the “Paris [agreement] is something that we need to really look at closely. It’s something we need to exit, in my opinion. It’s a bad deal for America. It was an America second, third, or fourth kind of approach.

“China and India had no obligations under the agreement until 2030,” Pruitt added. “We front-loaded all of our costs.”

Trump, on the other hand, has expressed support for the agreement and has backing from some in the U.S. oil and gas industry, including Exxon Mobil, which was led by Rex Tillerson before he was nominated for Secretary of State, a post he now holds.

“The industry campaign to stick with the Paris accord comes amid deep divisions in the Trump administration over the carbon-cutting agreement,” Bloomberg reported last month. “Both the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner, a White House special adviser, have urged the president to stay in the deal, along with Tillerson.”

“The decision to participate in next week’s U.N. climate talks shouldn’t be construed as a sign that Trump has decided to stay in the Paris pact,” a State Department official told the AP.

“To the contrary, the U.S. will be sending a ‘much smaller’ delegation than it has in years past, the official said, adding that they weren’t authorized to discuss specifics and requested anonymity from the AP.

According to the United Nations, 144 of the 197 countries that signed the Paris agreement have ratified it. It is unclear which 53 countries have not ratified it.